Typically, conventional data rotation services are tightly integrated within an application and perform services only for that particular application. A tightly integrated architecture might not be suitable for managing encrypted data in high-availability, multiple application software environments.
One problem with conventional crypto management services arises when transmitting or sharing data among separate-but-related applications. One application might not have the capability to decrypt data that has been encrypted by another application. For example, one application might use a different encryption technology than another application. If this is the case, then the applications must share data in unencrypted form.
Another problem with conventional crypto management services is that the extra step of decrypting and re-encrypting the data can cause extra load on the systems and reduce performance of an application that is using the same resources as the crypto management service. Such performance degradation may be unacceptable in the context of high-availability applications.
Yet another problem with conventional crypto management services is that the encrypted data is usually stored in the same location as unencrypted data. This makes handling data backups difficult when there are regulatory requirements for handling archived media containing encrypted data. Further, storing encrypted data in the same location as unencrypted data means the encrypted data is vulnerable to the same data corruption possibilities as the unencrypted data.
It would be beneficial to provide a centralized crypto system that performs various cryptography operations and stores encrypted data for one or more high-availability applications that share data. Such a software system may enable efficient centralized data management and encryption services among one or more high-availability applications.